A Week Later (sorry...)

Hello again to all you avid blog-watchers. We’re really sorry it’s taken so long to write another entry but we’ve had a pretty busy week this week, especially with having to get up early for our language classes and then having to do homework when we get home after work. Anyway, we have been let off homework tonight, so I thought I’d use the opportunity to update the blog.

I guess the first thing to tell you is that we went for dinner on Thursday night with a work colleague, who is a local designer that Andy has been working with and his wife joined us. Andy and our colleague picked up our colleague’s wife after work. Andy had a browse round the after school club that our colleague’s wife runs and then they took him to a couple of nice cafes. After which they came and picked me up after a meeting I had on the other side of town. Then me and our colleague’s wife went for a coffee whilst the boys went handbag shopping (birthday present for our colleague’s wife), then we went for a really nice meal.

On Friday we had a morning in catching up and doing a bit of homework and then went to church in the afternoon. After church we went to an International Night at the ex-patriot church a bit further away. The English team performed a skit involving bus stops and barn dancing – most amusing but not nearly as amusing as the Finland effort.

On Saturday we went to our local shopping area on Road 27 where Andy bought a guitar and we found a great supermarket with nice met and quite a lot of Bodeshi food – they even stock peanut butter (shame neither of us like it)! After our exhausting shopping trip in the heat we went for a drink in a really nice, cool art café that Andy had been introduced to the night before by our work colleague.

One of the amusing things about this country is the ATM experience. When you want to get cash out you have to find an ATM, which aren’t as common as in the UK. There’s normally a queue of people waiting outside, the ATM is inside a lovely air-conditioned booth and there’s a guard on the door. So the ATM experience is one of our lovely air-conditioning hot spots (you tend to jump between these AC hotspots when you find out where they are)

In the evening we then went to babysit for the children of a couple who go to our home group and who live round the corner. We were very privileged to have Moussaka and banana cake for our efforts – yummmm!

On Sunday back to another early start at language and unfortunately Andy got ill again, so didn’t make it in to language (although he wasn’t too sorry). I had to brave the CNGs all by myself and despite getting horribly lost I survived with my pigeon Bangla.

Monday was the usual work and home group in the evening and then today was much the same.

We’re both making good progress on our projects. I’m busy co-ordinating chocolate fondue parties across the city to raise awareness of human trafficking on the back of the Stop the Traffik campaign. For those who might be interested in hosting a chocolate fondue party, or want more information about the trafficking issue, I recommend you look at the website: http://www.stopthetraffik.org/getinvolved/act/chocolate Once you start to look more deeply at the problem I'm sure you'll be as moved as I have been. It brings a tear to my eye every time I think of children being bought and sold, never sure whether they will ever see their families again and kept in conditions of sheer slavery - this issue certainly needs a lot of prayers.

Anyway, before I start rambling too much about such injustices as human traffiking I better sign off for now and hopefully we'll do another update a bit sooner.

Thanks as always for all your lovely comments - we do love to read them, so keep posting away, or emailing us.

Lots of love (as always)